CONFIRMED: Top FBI Official Linked to Reporter Who Broke Trump Dossier Story (Details)

House Republicans are investigating contact between the FBI’s top lawyer and a Mother Jones reporter in the weeks before the left-leaning outlet broke the first news story about the existence of a disputed dossier alleging ties between President Donald Trump and the Kremlin, according to two congressional GOP sources who described documents linking the two men.

The GOP sources said the documents — made available recently to lawmakers by the Department of Justice — revealed that James Baker, the FBI’s general counsel, communicated with Mother Jones reporter David Corn in the weeks leading up to the November 2016 election. Corn was the first to report the existence of the dossier on Oct. 31 and that it was compiled by a former high-level western spy.

The Washington Post reported Thursday that Baker had been reassigned within the FBI, though the reason for the move was unclear.

Corn denied that Baker was a source for his story on the dossier.

“I’m not going to discuss my sources. But in order to prevent the dissemination of inaccurate information, I will say that James Baker was not my source for this story,” he said in a statement to POLITICO.

The congressional sources said there’s no conclusive evidence that Baker aided Corn’s reporting or acted as a source. But Republicans are pointing to the connection to cast suspicion about whether FBI officials had a hand in directing the details of the dossier to reporters, and the two sources said they expect it to be a focus of GOP investigators’ upcoming lines of inquiry.

During the presidential campaign, Democrats “were peddling” the most salacious Trump dossier allegations to news reporters, a new documentary about the dossier revealed on Friday.

“People associated with the Democrats were peddling that story,” NBC’s Ken Dilanian said in a special report that aired on MSNBC host Rachel Maddow’s show.

Dilanian was referring to the unsubstantiated claim in the dossier that Trump used prostitutes during a trip to Moscow in 2013. According to the dossier, which was written by former British spy Christopher Steele, the Kremlin had video evidence of the hotel room encounter and was using it to keep Trump in line.

“There really was no way you could prove it,” Dilanian said of the Trump gossip.

Dilanian did not provide additional insight into who the Democratic associates were who told him of the dossier’s illicit allegations so it is not known whether he was referring to the Democrats who funded the dossier or to Fusion GPS, the opposition research firm hired to investigate Trump.

The Clinton campaign and DNC jointly paid Fusion GPS for the project.

While Dilanian’s comment is not a complete surprise — the allegations about Trump were an open secret in Beltway journalist circles last year — it undercuts denials made both by Democrats and Fusion GPS’s founder about interactions with the media.

Time to drain the swamp?

Past time.

The Obama administration was actively working to keep Trump out of the White House – and still failed. That’s how incompetent they were!